This invention relates to conveyor devices for transporting biological material in containers to clinical test apparatus and more particularly to a conveyor system with a main transport lane for all containers to be tested and individual sidebar lanes associated with different clinical test apparatus, and traffic control gates at each sidebar lane for diverting separate groups of containers to their corresponding clinical test apparatus.
The term "clinical testing" is intended to refer to hematological tests, tests relating to immunoassay, toxicology, urinalysis and any other specific category of testing performed on biological or body material such as blood, serum, and urine for example. The clinical testing of blood, serum, urine or other body fluid provides invaluable information relative to the health status of an individual and clinical test results are commonly used for diagnostic evaluation, surgical decision making and the recognition of when a change or changes have occurred in a patient's health status.
Clinical testing often involves esoteric and costly procedures that must produce quality information with a high degree of accuracy. As new clinical tests are conceived and conventional clinical tests are improved, the expanding pool of information that is obtainable from various clinical tests must be weighed against the cost of obtaining such information. By reducing the cost of clinical tests, such tests can have the widest possible availability to those individuals who would benefit most from the tests.
One known way of reducing the costs for clinical testing is to perform such tests automatically and as quickly as possible. Thus diverse clinical test apparatus have been developed which operate independently of each other to perform different types of specialized tests with a minimal amount of personnel. The tests are usually performed on fluid samples that are contained in sample tubes, although other containment formats are also used, especially when the test material is not in fluid form.
However separate personnel and supervision teams are generally required to oversee each individual clinical test apparatus and separate work areas are often required for each specific category of clinical test apparatus. Thus, a laboratory which is engaged in diverse clinical testing procedures would require a relatively large facility space to accommodate the separate clinical test apparatus.
In a further attempt to reduce operating costs for clinical testing a common transport system has been developed to automatically deliver test material containers such as sample tubes to a variety of otherwise unrelated and independent clinical test apparatus. Such transport system includes a conveyor adapted to run along a predetermined travel path with different, unrelated clinical test apparatus located along the travel path of the conveyor. Each of the clinical test apparatus is adapted to operate on a common sample tube that is transported by the conveyor system.
The known conveyor systems for delivering sample tubes to different clinical apparatus are usually custom built for the particular needs of a test laboratory. In many instances the construction of conveyor systems for clinical test apparatus require dedicated installations of electrical power supply, plumbing service, vacuum and pressure service. Thus the known conveyor systems usually have the character of custom design, permanency and inflexibility once they are installed.
It is thus desirable to provide a conveyor system for clinical testing of biological materials in containers, which conveyor system can be constructed with modular stations for each clinical test apparatus, with simplified installations for plumbing, electricity, vacuum and pressure service that do not require ground, wall or ceiling installation.